BP Chats

Gardner on the basepaths looks like he's afraid to break the eggs in his pockets, while Carl Crawford seems to have forgotten he can steal bases....which condition will last longer???(Youpi from Winnipeg)

Probably the latter, because the Red Sox have rarely cared much about steals in recent years, if ever. Until Jacoby Ellsbury came along, their single-season list was Tommy Harper '73 and a bunch of Deadball-era guys. Your comment on Gardner reminds me of Casey Stengel's explanation of why Paul Waner was so good at sliding--he had to be graceful to avoid breaking the flask in his hip pocket. (Steven Goldman)

Fantastic essay on Paul Waner... how many players have you come across from the Pre-WW II era that could be considered highly-functioning alcoholics, using booze as a 'PAD' (performance altering drug)?(BL from Bozeman)

Thanks! Alcoholism was epidemic in baseball at least into the early 1960s, and it almost certainly hurt far more players than it helped. Probably the most famous example of a career destroyed by demon rum is that of Hack Wilson, but there are dozens and dozens more. The weird dichotomy is, and I was a bit uncomfortable telling some of the Waner/drinking stories because of this, that even though guys were killing themselves, this was often a source of fun, at least for baseball writers. You read a lot of stories about Bugs Raymond, the 1910s pitcher for the Giants who used to trade balls from the bullpen for beers, but John McGraw found him too often soused to be usable, cut him, and he had his head stomped in in a bar fight the next year. There's more of that then the "fun and successful drunk," but we hear a lot more about the latter. (Steven Goldman)

"Someone give him some milk to calm him down from all of those Red Bulls" - Keith Hernandez last night referring to Jeff Francour(brian from Brooklyn NY)

When I wrote about Paul Waner in today's YCLIU, I was writing about a guy whose physical tools might not have been the greatest, but his approach to hitting was very, very smart. Francoeur is the mirror image, a guy with all the tools but none of the brain cells.

...There are things Waner did that I've never seen done. Knowing a certain pitcher liked to pitch him inside, he would crowd the plate on the first pitch, and that pitch would be called a strike. Then he'd back off a bit, the pitcher would come inside again, but now that pitch was a ball, and the pitcher wouldn't even know why. (Steven Goldman)